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Wasteland 2 has been released to great acclaim, earning Game of the Year from PCWorld, and reaching #1 on the Steam sales charts. Now, the Director's Cut comes as a free PC update to all backers as our thanks for making the game happen!

Re-Sorting Inventory

Chris Keenan here. Before we get into the juicy stuff, a quick status update on the backer beta.

Development at this point is going faster than ever! Now that we have all of our tools in a great place, we’re spending most of our time making the experience better. You might have noticed that we haven’t updated the beta code in a while and there is a good reason for that. The next update contains some major upgrades almost across the board. We’ve made some huge leaps in optimization and reducing our memory footprint. With your help, we’ve killed over 200 bugs in this update and implemented some great reactivity and conversation suggestions that we received from the community. The inventory system has had an exciting overhaul (more on that later) and a new town (Prison) is being added. The Prison used to be Ranger Center until they took over the Guardian Citadel and made it their home. The OSX build has been in testing and we’re fixing some compatibility issues so there is a good chance it will be ready when the next code update is live. Linux has not been forgotten and will follow after OSX is released.

Because of the scope of the update it's taking a little longer than anticipated, we'll keep you posted on its status as we keep working on it. Last update we talked about offering a one-time chance to get into the early beta for only $10 to all our backers. The timing of this promotion will coincide with the update going out, so it is not yet available now. It will be a short run promotion so we’ll make sure to notify everyone in an update when it has started.

Broken Age Released

Double Fine’s industry changing Kickstarter for Broken Age (previously known as Double Fine Adventure) could not have come at a better time for us at inXile. They proved that there are other opportunities for small to mid-sized team besides the traditional models that had become stale for both developers and game fans alike. It was literally a few weeks after Brian decided to shelve his dream Wasteland 2 project when Double Fine made waves by taking to Kickstarter. It's become so regular now for larger Kickstarter projects to appear that we forget how much Double Fine changed the landscape, and without them making Wasteland 2 would never have been possible.

Like us, Tim was looking for ways to connect directly to his audience and bypass the traditional publisher model, and succeeded to the tune for raising over $3.6 million. And now the first fruit of the combined power of DoubleFine's creativity and fan's support is here. DoubleFine just released the first part of their adventure game, Broken Age. It is available for $25 from Steam as a season pass, which means it includes access to Act 2 when it’s released. Broken Age is getting great reviews and feedback so if you’re a fan of the genre, check it out!

Novellas & T-shirt

Stephen Blackmoore's novella All Bad Things has gone through copy editing and proper formatting for digital release, and we're releasing it to our backers as of right now! If you have the Early Access package the novella will download automatically within a day, into your Steam install folder (that is ..\Steam\SteamApps\common\Wasteland 2\Books\All Bad Things). You can also find it in your Ranger Center account, we included a link and download code for you to use under the Rewards tab (bottom of the page). Enjoy the read, we certainly did!

Following our collective disappointment at the idea of not having the Stackpole novellas, we put our heads together and came up with a solution that works for all parties involved. Rather than Nathan working on his own novella, he is combining forces with Mike Stackpole. Together, they will be delivering two action-packed novellas that tie in seamlessly with the storylines of both Wasteland and Wasteland 2. These are in the works now and we will give you more details as they near completion.

We shipped out the backer-only shirts in mid-October. If you specified your choice on Ranger Center but have not yet received your shirt, please do contact us. If you've been given a redemption key to use on the J!nx website for your T-shirt choice, please be aware the cut-off date for the use of those is February 14th.

Inventory & Character Screen Upgrade

We’re extremely happy with how the new inventory is coming along. It greatly reduces the amount of unnecessary micromanagement and is much more visually appealing than the previous iteration. Instead of being list based, we were able to make it more icon based with unique icons for all items. The list style inventory works well for a game like WL2 with lots of items to collect, but lacks a bit of the soul that comes with an icon based inventory. There is something special about getting to see all the items you own in one spot. We had always hoped to go with an icon based system, but early in the project we were hesitant to commit to it due to the greatly increased art costs. We’re now at the point where we feel comfortable taking on the challenge and know it will make for a better experience.

The image above shows the new backpack. Long gone are the days of hitting the backpack button and having 4-7 packs pop open. By selecting the party member along the side, you can see the contents of their pack. If you select the “All” button, it will show you the contents of all packs in one easy to read space. Hovering over an item in this mode will highlight the party member on the left to show whose bag it’s in. Drag it to the PC you want to have it and you’re good to go!

When you mouse over the item, you will get all stat and useful information displayed in a small pop-up. You also can further examine the items by double clicking to read the details and see any additional description information.

This grid-based inventory is not limited for space. You can manually keep it sorted yourself under the all items tab if you have your own system in mind, or have the game auto-sort it under one of the other tabs (which will not re-set your manual sorting).

At the same time, we’re also updating the character, attribute, skills and dossier screens. No longer will they be full screen but instead a more compact window, which gives us space to combine it with another screen. Additionally, dropping items in the world, adding them to hotkey bars, and trading becomes much easier when you can move this compact window around to the most convenient screen spot.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new inventory vs. the previous one. Please leave comments on our forums or in this Kickstarter update. It will be included in our next code update so those in the beta will go hands-on shortly!

In the news

Strategy Informer offers a new interview with Brian Fargo about crowdfunding and the development process of Wasteland 2.

Both Game Informer and PCGamer are offering spotlight pieces on Mark Morgan, covering his career as well as the games he's working on now, such as Wasteland 2.

The interface is still looking bad. Art direction is definatly worse than fallout has. Designer just put stylistically different elemetns together. The photoshop shadow behind the icons make them appear plain and looks wrong.

Great update! I really like the new look of the menus shape wise, however, maybe tune the turqoise color to more of a dark green to match the rest and be less Xcom and Shadowrun. And the inventory colors of the rings for different types of items, maybe turn down the saturation of those? :) Thanks for listening.

New UI elements are brilliant, much improved from the older versions in terms of functionality (I also approved of icon based inventory). Would just like to echo some who suggest making the aesthetic trimmings of the UI a bit more "gritty" and "wastelandy/industrial/post-apoc". Overall, great work guys. Very excited for the game.

@Tyler Head: I agree. With a little more grittiness and shadows added, the new ui screens (and especially item icons) will be perfect. The only issues to be found with them is the fact that they are too bright and shiny, not gritty and post-apoc. Fantastic otherwise though.

I really REALLY like the inventory screen upgrade, but i'm sure you can get some more refinement on the baby and give it, a real Wasteland 2 feel. A layer of subtle raunchiness perhaps. Keep up the great work! Can't wait to read the Novella!!! Wasteland 2 is teasing me hardcore lol. Come out soon. Cheers!

I like the change to an icon based system, but I think that maybe the icons and such are a little to bright. Also, The borders of the windows do not match the general feel of the game. The idea is sound though, it just needs some tweaks. Darkening the color pallet, adding some shading to the icons, and changing the color scheme back to the greener look would make it more coherent.

Hello everyone. I have some suggestion for our developers. First of all, that come to mind at once, i ask you bring more reality in game. I see at sreenshoots (last espesially) that figure of fellow do not coherent with equipment. For example, you use some kind of body amour but the appereance of fellow do not change coherently with what equipment he\she use. To make game more real you should coincedence this stuff (least of all armor and weapons) and of cause it should be done in game it self also (not only in equipment dialog). It is the mane problem that i notice.
Other things not so significant - like matching icons to common design of game for me=)
Thanks for attention.

That being said - count me in the camp that doesnt care too much about the "Olympic circles" - color coding seems redundant when you have picture icons already.

Also, +1 to George Akhvlediani and others who pointed out that the Attributes icons are horribly inconsistent in color and style, both between themselves and the rest of the interface.
I don't seem the point of icons at all since the stat names are already written, but if you insist on keeping them - could you perhaps consider more stylized icon, in single color?

BTW, I dont mind if you go with more off-beat icons; some of the other backer suggestions (biceps arm, winged foot, etc..) seem too cliched and over-used in other games.

From the first look it feels like a nice update of the UI. Don't know how it will be in the game but it for sure is more compact (less mouse movements -> better).
And as much I like green or yellow I'm kinda bored with that colours from Fallout. Cyan certainly fits!

Superbacker

You mention you will "notify everyone in an update " when your "early beta for only $10 to all our backers" offer takes effect. I am a backer, but I saw this only through my facebook page. Will there be an e-mail on the subject?

Not trying to whine, I just want to make sure I know when the offer is in effect. :)

I like the changes for the most part, but if I'm being honest, I don't like the attribute icons at all. They seemed jagged and disorienting. Not only are they all different colors, but they don't seem to have a consistent aesthetic.

You don't have to have attribute icons, but if you do, make sure they mesh well. Either match their color or their style. Also, I really wouldn't have more than one color for each icon, even if you want to have multiple icons. I just don't think it's suitable for a menu display.

If you're going to do a cartoony thing, I'd have it as a separate description that perhaps pops up when you select the stat, like a sticky note or something. I dunno.

I'm not here to tell you how to do your job, but I don't like those attribute icons at all as they are.

The effort being poured into the game’s interface, icons, and overall aesthetic shows because the title is really starting to strike a professional tone visually. If this same level of effort runs more than skin deep, Wasteland 2 just might be a sleeper hit that makes serious noise amongst core gamers. Which I’m sure everyone along for this ride hopes it does.

Thanks for mentioning linux port and thanks for delivering novella in DRM free EPUB. Not sure if I like the new inventory, sure looks pretty, but I am afraid it will not be as useful as the list based one in beta2. In depth feedback will come on forum when I get to test out how it works in practice and have read the novella.